I agree with you ohfa, if you are in your mid twenties and get in at the start of the recruitment wave it's a great career move, but what I am trying to convey is that is a limited pool of pilots these days in this demographic.. With the amount of other Airline jobs around Qantas isn't as attractive as it used to be, and the lower wage for new S/O's on the 787 is part of this.
At the start of the last big recruitment we had ansett fall over, and with it Kendall's and a variety of other small airlines. Every second new person you spoke to here seemed to be from one of them, and the only other option was Virgin Blue which was just starting. Fast forward to today a lot of pilots in their late 20's and thirties are already flying jet equipment on high wages as relative senior F/O's or even Captains. Many are happy with their lot, and don't see any gain in moving to Qantas and taking a demotion and reduced pay for an unspecified period of time.
Look at the posts here with Qlink using 457 visas, there just isn't the pool of pilots there used to be. I think they will get a huge amount of applicants of course, but not the numbers they got 10-15 years ago.
As I have stated before I would recommend to anyone to apply to work here, and it's fantastic to finally see some new faces about to start....it's like a grey hair convention here at the moment !!!